Review: Keep You Close, by Lucie Whitehouse – with Giveaway

When the artist Marianne Glass falls to her death, everyone insists it was a tragic accident. Yet Rowan Winter, once her closest friend, suspects there is more to the story. Ever since she was young, Marianne had paralyzing vertigo. She would never have gone so close to the roof’s edge.

Marianne–and the whole Glass family–once meant everything to Rowan. For a teenage girl, motherless with a much-absent father, this lively, intellectual household represented a world of glamour and opportunity.

But since their estrangement, Rowan knows only what the papers reported about Marianne’s life: her swift ascent in the London art world, her much-scrutinized romance with her gallerist. If she wants to discover the truth about her death, Rowan needs to know more. Was Marianne in distress? In danger? And so she begins to seek clues–in Marianne’s latest work, her closest relationships, and her new friendship with an iconoclastic fellow artist.

But the deeper Rowan goes, the more sinister everything seems. And a secret in the past only she knows makes her worry about her own fate . . .

Buy, read, and discuss this book.

About the author, Lucie Whitehouse

Lucie Whitehouse grew up in Warwickshire, England, studied classics at the University of Oxford, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughter. She is author of The House at Midnight, The Bed I Made, and Before We Met.

Connect with Lucie

My Thoughts

I love a good thriller. I love the mystery, and the sense of jeopardy that comes with the not knowing, and I love the way a well-written thriller hits you right i the sweet spot of the amygdalae, and makes your skin shiver.

From the very first page of Keep You Close, author Lucie Whitehouse has set the absolutely perfect tone. It starts with a snowy night, a rooftop quarrel, and a deathly fall. It broadens into the friends and family, specifically Rowan, who were close to Marianne, the victim, and running through it are the dual threads of the artists’ personality – how being creative often skews you perceptions and the way you engage in relationships, and art – from the very first scene where Marianne comes in to find papers and sketches arrayed like fallen snowflakes around her house.

While it’s Marianne’s death that we are meant to be comprehending, this novel is very much Rowan’s story. In memories, it has elements of a chummy college years story, but those memories serve the twin purposes of grounding us in the heightened reality in which Keep You Close takes place, and in showing us how a rift between best friends can echo through the years.

As we discover Rowan and Marianne’s secrets, as the jeopardy to Rowan increases, Whitehouse’s storytelling just gets better and better. This novel isn’t quite a roller coaster, but only because it’s more atmospheric than that. Rather, it’s a gracefully unwinding spiral, and a compelling read.

Goes well with fresh from the vendor fish n’ chips, steaming hot & wrapped in newspaper, served with a craft ale or lager.

Giveaway

This one’s a quickie for the weekend. ONE reader from the US/Canada will get a copy of this book.

Three ways to enter (one entry per person for each choice, so if you do all three, you’re entered three times).

“the sense of jeopardy that comes with the not knowing, and I love the way a well-written thriller hits you right i the sweet spot of the amygdalae, and makes your skin shiver.” SO MUCH THIS! I love when I book brings that out in me!

Thanks for being a part of the tour.

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